


In a White Room

by fannishliss



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-21
Updated: 2011-07-21
Packaged: 2017-11-27 09:09:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/660251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fannishliss/pseuds/fannishliss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>  He's perfectly at rest within the peaceful confines of the white room -- but he's starting to perceive something more. </p>
            </blockquote>





	In a White Room

**title: In a White Room**  
author: [](http://fannishliss.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://fannishliss.livejournal.com/)**fannishliss**    
spoilers: none  
pairing: Ten, Rose/Ten2  
rating: G  
words: 2666

 __ **Summary:  He's perfectly at rest within the peaceful confines of the white room -- but he's starting to perceive something more.**  
  
Author's notes: i do not own the idea of the White Room.  I'm currently reading _Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible,_ by Marc Platt, which has no bearing except that it seemed to unlock a somewhat poetic, free-flowing and timey-wimey take on Ten's ordeal of regeneration.  It also has little to do with the famous song, tho it did play a lot in my mind while I wrote it.  Enjoy!  
  
~**~

The unbroken calmness of four white walls --  
a coolness in the air as of a spring morning --  
a clear pellucid light, not too bright, but not dim --  
a crispness about himself, as of clean white sheets --  
a tranquillity, as of awakening on a day when duties are light and pleasures await --  
a refreshening, as though the night’s rest had been deep, pleasant and dreamless --

but  --

 -- dream --

the word awakened something --

as though fire flickered silently on the other side of a pane of glass -- 

and fire brought thoughts of disturbance, as though the grindings of gears as massive as continents had turned to produce a world of disaster, and all his muscles and all his thoughts and all the mighty twinges of his hearts had been thrown out of joint to stop those massive gears  --

the remembrance of pain drifted across his nerves as though down a mirrored stream.  The remembrance flowed beyond him and was forgotten. 

The breeze stirred what seemed to be white curtains in one part of the white room, but curtains and wall were both of such a similar, shimmery, sunny but not dazzling whiteness that the curtains could only be detected as an effect of the pleasant breeze they moved among.

The walls of the room held no echoes, no ticks of any measuring clock. His ears, had he any, filled with no thrummings of hearts beating, though he was quite sure that recently hearts had beat in his ears, in his aching throat, in his tortured limbs as he strove against something, very recently he thought.

The white room was as calm as springtime, calmer even. It was something like snow, like a perfect blanket of whiteness sifting down upon fields, heaping up upon treelimbs, cold against the walls and windows of houses, very snug and sleepy and warm within. 

The white room was just that snug, like the hollow a small creature might fill with dry leaves and curl up in, but then again, its summery light and flowery springtime breezes weren’t as deep as all that. 

He began to wonder about the walls of the room.

Were they solid? Were they permeable?  The breezes must come and go somehow, light must emit from a source, the endless freshness and temperate atmosphere must be generated somewhere.

The crispness of the sheets was so soothing against his skin that he almost couldn’t register the distinction, that edge of discomfort where skin ended and sheet began.  The sheets were infinitely soothing, his body was infinitely relaxed, and he had no inkling of moving as yet, but still, his mind would question, wouldn’t it?

If he turned his head, would he see a window?

In fact, could he open his eyes and see anything in this perfectly undifferentiated room of whiteness?

He should have felt a rise in blood pressure, a tightening of the limbs, a kick as his systems prepared for action at a thought like this.

Instead he remained perfectly relaxed, and already the breeze began to wisp his alarm away, on down the springtime stream, into the distance, where perhaps his concerns would wash ashore in a summery meadow, full of flowers and chiming with the territorial screams of birds.

If only, if only... longings bubbled up inside his calmness, despite the peace and perfect blankness of the room.  Longings arose within him, and all the soothing waters and slightly scented breezes in the world couldn’t wash them away.

He didn’t want to go.

He didn’t want to go.

He didn’t, but clearly, he had gone, and now, he was here.  Somewhere.  Alone.  He had gone, and he had no idea if there were any way of returning. 

The satiny smooth sheets wound around him.  The breezes caressed him.  The trickling waters of Lethe whispered and urged him to relenquish, to succumb, to relieve himself of the burdens of all that had gone. 

It was difficult to resist such a pleasant tomb, but more difficult for him, for who he was, to surrender. 

He struggled but could not feel his body.  He realized that there was every possibility that he no longer had a body to struggle with.  He comprehended suddenly that the pleasant room of his slumbers was his mind’s own compensation for all the input of which it had been deprived. 

Holding these realizations close, he allowed himself to rest for a while.  He trusted his mind to do what was best for him, or at least, under these circumstances, he could do little else.

He had no ticking of a clock to help him pass away the time.  A sweet little clock, standing upon its table on little clock feet, all white with gold curlicues, bright brass numbers and a shining glass face -- he did not have.

But all the same, he began to hear it.

The faint chirp of clockworks, simple, elegant machinery, was as beautiful to him as anything he could imagine -- an orchestra playing in perfect tune, a choir of children lifting their flutelike tones toward the dark and mysterious ceiling of a vast cathedral, a forest with all its birds and insects beating out the forward march of life.  That little clock, once he heard it, filled his mind, and when he could hear it, he listened.

The times between tickings he passed at rest.  The pleasant white walls and sheets and breezes did their work of restoring his peace.

Once, he seemed to open his eyes. That had been enough to shiver the white room almost into icy blue, but he had soon calmed enough to reflect upon the vision.

What had the glimpse revealed?

A bedroom. A large expanse of bed, upon which he seemed to be lying.  A vanity in one corner, a desk in the other.  Two night tables on either side of the bed, each bearing their lamps and books and sundries. Two comfortably upholstered chairs grouped around a small low table.  Curtained windows. An ensuite bath. A door out.  A wholly ordinary bedroom, but one so different from the one where he currently slumbered as to excite a flurry of intense emotion, before the soft breezes blew it away.  He could have wept at that rose-colored terrycloth robe, flung carelessly over one easy chair.  He could have sung out loud the praises of that pair of red trainers, kicked off under the desk.  He longed to taste so much as a crumb from the tea tray perched nonchalantly on the table between the two chairs.  He tried to imagine the flavor of that crumb, bursting across his senses like the glory of dawn.  He failed, and sank into a peaceful oblivion.

But when later, he recollected himself, he had not forgotten. 

The ticking helped: its regularity, its singsong pitches, the steady reliability of its eagerly awaited return-- if anything could be said to be eagerly awaited by one whose sole focus is a faint, lost ticking, and who alternates between fixation on that ticking and a timeless, helpless oblivion.

Still, he felt such relief when he could hear the ticking, and when he could ponder that glimpse of a bedroom, that he could not help but consider the ticking eagerly awaited.

He grew to appreciate the streams and breezes, the uninsistent light, for his mind was clear and receptive, ready to chime in sympathetically with the soft, faithful ticking. But the breezes and streams were so infinitely delicate that he was quite unprepared when he awoke to a bracing sensation of water, drenching him thoroughly from head to toe.

He would’ve gasped had he lungs, he would have shivered or rubbed himself ecstatically had he hands or a body, but as he had none of that, he simply stood as water poured over him, feeling the rivulets and trickles, the stinging heat as though a shower struck and pulsed against his naked skin. He felt a sensation as though he were being soaped all over and rubbed with a rough piece of cloth.  He grabbed at these sensations, so vivid and so alive they made him feel, and he struggled to secret them inside whatever remained of him.  Perhaps he was only remembering, perhaps replaying like a desperate echo the memory of some shower he’d particularly enjoyed.  Regardless, it was heaven.  He soaked in every drop until he faded again into whiteness.

After the first shower, there were others, each just as glorious as that first.  He had no toes, no armpits, but the shower filled him with glee that such parts had existed.  The joy he felt as water sluiced between his toes would have set him wriggling like a puppy if he’d had anything to wriggle.  He took delight in the body’s grossness as the shower proved that such things might be day to day concerns: soaping his armpits, reaching behind to get his bum, squelching the wax uncomfortably from his ears, snorting out boogers in the wet warmth of the shower -- he reveled in it like a mischievous schoolboy, but it never lasted long.  The shower was brisk and efficient, a quotidian chore his illicit joy, and it always completely overwhelmed him. 

There was no way to measure the interludes between his resurfacings, or indeed, any way to know if those interludes held significance in any real sense.  To him, sensation of any kind had become a hangoverless high.  Giddy, he’d throw himself into the pure enjoyment and sink without rancor into the depths when it grew to be all too much to handle. 

The time came when he felt himself putting on trainers.  Cautiously, not daring to hope for too much, he peeked, and actually seemed to see long fingers racing nimbly through the motions of tying the strings.  The canvas gripped his feet securely.  He gave a bounce, feeling his body’s weight as he tested each shoe.  Almost, he had felt his lungs take in great gulps of air.  But this was too much.  He faded. 

The intrusion of sensation into the peace of the white room had not disturbed him.  The streams and breezes still did their job, whisking away his anxiety the instant it occurred, offering him restorative slumber during interludes between his ordeals of intense excitement. 

It was an almost paradisical existence.

Still, the transience of his experiences seemed to bother him, what there was of him to be bothered. The gentle ticking of his friend the clock had reminded him that somewhere Time was passing.  Time, he seemed to recall, was something special.  Time, he thought, had been his lover, his enemy, his homeland, his exile.  Time.

The ticking ran on, and sometimes there were showers, putting on trainers, glimpses of a room.

Wasn’t there meant to be more?

When next he experienced vision, he strained and stared, struggling to take in every little detail. 

The plushness of the carpet beneath his feet, tickling his toes with familiarity as he gripped onto it.

The brilliant crimson of the coverlet. 

The soft coral tiles of the walls of the ensuite bath.

And then he realized that underneath it all ran a fragrance so pervasive, so familiar, that he hadn’t even noticed it stealing in to take up residence in his thoughts, throughout visions, through auditory stimuli, even treasured deep in his nostrils during his perfunctory showers.

The fragrance had a name, a paradoxical name, not at all floral, but somehow reminiscent of some gorgeous profusion of color and delight.

He struggled to gasp, to breathe it in, to seize that fragrance, so elusive, so beloved that somehow, he had never let it go. He reeled with the intensity of his effort, could almost taste success, when, miracle of miracles, he heard a voice:

“Doctor?”

Like being swept underneath a tidal wave, like the plunge of a fabled continent beneath its fated tide, he sank.

The whiteness of the room was eternal, its serenity bright and unchanging, promising him a generous, all-encompassing nepenthe from which he might never emerge.

He rejected it. 

The next time he heard the faintest ticking, he seized upon it with all the powers he could manage to focus.  He harnessed the gentle stream and the soothing breeze; he absorbed all the energies of the veiled but sunny light, and brought all this to bear upon his quest to break through.  The non-body lying cocooned in cool million-thread-count sheets he rejected, and focused it all upon a body ready to leap from bed, into a shower, into trainers, and out into a world beyond a bedroom.

Most of all, he longed to breathe in, to fill his lungs with air tinged with a scent so much more restorative than the gentle drafts of that restful room. 

He longed to open his eyes and really see that bedroom around him, the bedroom where some other person stood from a vanity and threw down a robe.

With all his not inconsiderable strength of will, all he had left, he longed to open his eyes and gaze into the eyes of that other person, the one who had offered him all she was, and to whom he could proffer no less.

With all his might, he thrust himself out of the cool chamber prepared for him, into the unpredictable vagaries of reality, where he might breathe and listen and run and get sweaty and laugh into a pair of precious eyes.

He tore himself free of the gentle white room, and launched himself into the darkness and the void beyond.

For a terrifying eon he was paralyzed.  Nothingness pressed into and through him from all dimensions, threatening to undo all he’d managed to cling to, all he’d ever been. 

He struggled, but there was nothing more to cling to. He felt himself sinking for the very last time.  He wanted to fight on, but he’d used it all up. There was no more left to focus, nothing left to burn, only the memories of those precious sensations, that one scent stitching together the tatters of him that remained.

He breathed deeply into that scent, and with an exhalation, opened his eyes.

“Good morning,” Rose said, smiling at him.

How he loved it when she woke him like this, staring into his sleepy eyes with so much affection, so much love.  All of that for him?  He would gladly have traded thousands of years of dreary Time Lord regenerations, for just one morning of awakening under that beloved gaze.

“Good morning,” he said, smiling back.

“Feeling better this morning, are you?” she asked.

“Yes, much,” he said.  He’d had quite a strange turn of dizziness just before bed the night before.  Wiggling his toes, flexing his fingers, rotating his neck around the column of his spine, all seemed in good working order.  A little stiffness in his right ankle -- he’d have to spend more time stretching after this morning’s run.

He reached out with an arm and marveled at the wonderful sensation.  It felt as though he hadn’t reached out an arm in ages.  He fingered a lock of Rose’s hair, baby fine and silky against his skin.

“You are so amazingly beautiful,” he whispered, and all the love he felt for her rushed up from somewhere deep inside his glorious, fragile, human body, and it shook him how much he loved her, as though, once again, he were realizing it for the very first time.

“So are you,” she answered, grinning, tilting her face toward his for a kiss.

They kissed, and parted, and he slipped his nose behind her ear, and filled his brain with the gorgeous scent of Rose, and all that he was resounded with joy.

Somewhere, a universe away, an empty chamber collapsed unheeded amongst the vastnesses of a Time Lord’s subconsciousness, whilst here, in the land of the living, the Doctor and Rose made sweet use of the morning. 


End file.
